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Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead

In Harlem Shuffle, Colston Whitehead’s protagonist, Ray Carney, takes readers through often intersecting communities in Harlem, in the late 50s-early 60s: into bars, laundromats, bakeries, and social clubs, through front doors and back doors, “doorways [that] were entrances into different cities—no, different entrances into one vast, secret city.” Carney owns a neighborhood furniture store, strives to move his family to a tonier apartment, and lives mostly on the straight and narrow, save a side gig as a fence. However, Carney’s world is upended when his cousin makes him an unwitting accessory in a jewel heist and lands him smack in the middle of trouble, entwined in a web of thieves, crooked cops, and mobsters. Increasingly, Carney sees fewer distinctions between the “straight” and “criminal” worlds.

Whitehead subverts the crime novel genre, blurring notions of “legal” and “illegal,” “just” and “unjust.” We root for Carney as he tries to save himself and his cousin and realize his ambitions. Along the way, Whitehead draws a map through Carney’s beloved Harlem—its history, characters, contradictions, triumphs, and enduring spirit.

LUISA GIULIANETTI
Curriculum Coordinator
Centers for Educational Equity and Excellence, CE3

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

The Road to Wellville
TC Boyle

In the early 1900s a group of strangers meet in the breakfast cereal capital of the USA, Battle Creek, Michigan. There they find the “San” (Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s sanitarium), where they seek optimum health and enlightenment. This satirical, quasi-historical piece of fiction takes a bite out of “wellness” communities, the idea of food as medicine, and cult-like following of diet and alternative medicine gurus, not to mention get-rich-quick schemes. It’s an American tale through and through–one that is as relevant today as it was at the beginning of the last century.

MAGGIE SOKOLIK
Director
College Writing Programs

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

We are Dancing For You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies
Cutcha Risling Baldy

Dr. Risling Baldy’s Indigenous feminist voice speaks truth to power on difficult topics: California history and genocide, anthropology, and salvage ethnography. But through these recollections, experiences, and narrative evidence the triad goals of (re)righting, (re)writing, and (re)riteing history bring hope for the future.

NAZUNE MENKA
Lecturer & Tribal Cultural Resources Policy Fellow
Berkeley Law

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

Your Inner Fish: A Journey in the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin

In this book, Neil Shubin, paleontologist and professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago, examines the interconnectedness of life across billions of years. Drawing upon his discovery of the Tiktaalik—the “fish with hands”—Shubin demonstrates elegantly simple ways that humans, and other species, are connected to one another. In addition to an accessible examination of evolution, his narrative is filled with observations and anecdotes from his work in the field, offering powerful models of how to locate, identify, and analyze patterns that can improve our ability to make inferences and predictions.

CAROLINE COLE
Lecturer
College Writing Programs

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

When Brute Force Fails: How to have less crime and less punishment
Mark A.R. Kleiman

Maybe the best public policy book of the last decade. The subtitle says it all: crime is costly but so is punishment (both not only in money); if we’re smart we can have less of both.

MICHAEL O’HARE
Professor of the Graduate School
Goldman School of Public Policy

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
Alex Ross

Like music? The music of today, classical and popular, is impossible without Wagner. Like history? Philosophy? Sociology? Novels? Movies? It’s all here. The western world from the 1860s turned to Wagner in so many ways (for good and ill), and still does.

MICHAEL O’HARE
Professor of the Graduate School
Goldman School of Public Policy

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

Exit West
Mohsin Hamid

Exit West depicts a world where magical doors exist that allow for refugees to emigrate from their war-torn countries. The novel follows a pair of refugees who fall in love and try to make their lives better by finding new opportunities after their hometown becomes overrun with violence. Apart from being a good read, the book goes along with the theme of illuminating communities by offering great insight into issues faced by refugee communities that are often overlooked by society. Exit West was definitely an eye-opener for me; if you get the chance to check it out, I hope you enjoy it!

(Note: Exit West was also the On the Same Page pick for the incoming class in Fall 2020.)

ZAYD ALI
Mechanical Engineering major
Class of 2025

This book is part of the 2022 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!